#SharingGospelJoy

Share How You Participate in Mission in Your Area

Year 2018 is the Columban centennial year. We are honored to have joyfully shared the Gospel with many cultures and peoples for the last 100 years. Pope Francis' call of the Gospel Joy effectively describes our experience. This sharing of the Gospel Joy is the cause of several celebratory events to commemorate our missionary history. Yet, our celebrations are not just about us, it is also an invitation to you who desires to participate in mission. Become a missionary, share the Gospel Joy. How?

Some years ago, there was a simple phrase that motivated many, "Think Globally, Act Locally." We know not all can travel to far distant lands. However, mission is not a geographical location but a way of living. As Columbans, our goal is to encourage all to mission, no matter who you are or where you live. Now we give you three simple steps to do so.

1. Do a Missionary Outreach

Do a missionary outreach in your area. We give 100 practical suggestions to help you discern what you can do, although some volunteer opportunities will require advance preparation and discussion with the organization. See below.

2. Record the Moment

Record the moment with photographs or artwork. Reflect on it and write about the experience.

3. Share on Social Media

We invite you to participate in the mission and to joyfully share the Gospel.

Rev. John Burger, SSC
Regional Director

100 Ways You Can Share Gospel Joy in Your Area

Spend time in your front lawn or driveway rather than your backyard. Engage people in conversation as they walk by your house. Ask about how they are doing, etc.

Offer to walk neighborhood dogs for people who need a hand.

Bake something delicious and deliver it to your neighbors.

Do a food drive or coat drive in winter and get neighbors involved

Host a game night (yard games outside, or board games inside) to bring people together.

Organize a community garage sale and give the proceeds to a local charity.

Grow a garden and give out extra produce to neighbors

Have an Easter egg hunt on your block and invite neighbors to participate

Create a block/street email and phone contact list for safety

Start a walking/running/Bunco/bridge group in the neighborhood

Start a card ministry

Send care packages to deployed soldiers, new college students, or maybe to someone you know who is fighting off the flu.

Donate books to your local shelter

Hold a bake sale for your favorite charity.

Hand out water to anyone working in the neighborhood.

Deliver food to elderly friends, new parents or anyone who might need a good meal.

Sponsor a child for basic needs or for school.

Collect school supplies for a schools that struggle financially.

Create a jar that says Emergency Relief Fund and collect change to donate after the next natural disaster abroad. When the situation arises on the news, you can immediately send the money you have saved.

Purchase gifts from shops that give a percentage back to a school or other helpful organization in the country where the items were made.

Participate in an international fundraiser/awareness campaign.

Buy fair trade chocolate, coffee, and tea.

Decide not to go out to eat for a month, and donate the money you saved to the local food pantry.

Befriend a family who just moved from another country. It can be very lonely to be immersed in a new culture without familiar faces or a network of support.

Go to a local nursing home and visit a resident who doesn't receive many visitors.

Drive someone to a doctor's appointment/chemotherapy/colonoscopy.

Volunteer at a local elementary school and listen to kids read or help out in the cafeteria.

Run/Bike/Swim in a charity 5K/10K/triathlon.

Assist a senior citizen with a home improvement project (painting, changing batteries in smoke detectors, etc.).

Write a note to someone letting that person know how grateful you are for their presence in your life.

Reach out in a personal way to a family member or friend with whom you have lost contact

Visit someone from your parish or faith community who is in a nursing home or rehabilitation center

Invite someone who doesn't attend church to accompany you to church for a particular celebration, such as First Communion, Confirmation ceremony, Mother's Day or Father's Day

Join a parish ministry group that will stretch your horizons – invite a friend to go along with you so that you can learn something new together

Give your family's used, clean clothes to a local homeless shelter or to a thrift store that supports those in need

Try hard to understand someone who has a perspective on life, the world and the church that differs greatly from yours – listen respectfully without arguing or "correcting" them

Go out for a meal to a restaurant with someone from a different cultural background and let s/he introduce you to their ethnic food

Express your gratitude to someone whose services you frequently take for granted

Express a renewed sense of gratitude to someone whose kindness meant so much to you in the past

Invite someone who is grieving out for coffee and listen attentively to their story

Learn about recycling opportunities in your area and plan on responding in at least one new way

Make one evening a tech-free evening each week in order to spend quality time with family members and friends. Invite them to do likewise.

Call your Members of Congress and tell them about an issue affecting your community. For support or guidance, contact Rebecca Eastwood, Advocacy Coordinator for the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach.

Schedule an in-district visit with your Members of Congress to talk about issues affecting your community. For support or guidance, contact Rebecca Eastwood, Advocacy Coordinator for the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach.

Engaging with your Members of Congress on social media is an excellent way to get their attention and inform them about the issues you care about. Follow your Members of Congress on social media and message them about the issues affecting your community. For support or guidance, contact Wesley Cocozello, Communicators and Programs Coordinator for the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach.

Contact your local Catholic Charities and ask about volunteer opportunities to support refugee families in your community. To find your local Catholic Charities, please click here.

Elected officials read "letters to the editor" (or, LTE) in order to understand the "pulse" of their communities and constituents. So write a LTE on an issue in your community. For a backgrounder on the best way to write and submit an LTE, please click here.

Invite your friends and family over to discuss the issues going on in your community. How do they affect you? How do they affect your neighbor? What does your faith us to say about the issue? As a starting point, considering reading one of the Columban's statements on our priority areas. You can find those here.

The invite your guests to write postcards to your Members of Congress on any of the issues you identified. For ideas, check out www.columbancenter.org for more information and updates on Columban priority issues.

Find out who is running for office in your state or congressional district and attend a town hall or candidate forum to learn more about them.

Participate in an interfaith event or worship service. If there isn't one happening in your local community in the near future, consider going to a house of worship that does not belong to your faith tradition or hosting such an event at your own place of worship.

Reflect on the experience of Columban missionaries overseas by listening to a podcast interview with a Columban lay missionary, Lani Tamatawale.

Talk to your pastor about how your parish can conserve energy. Are there easy ways to reduce your community carbon footprint? Get in touch with Catholic Energies for resources and guidance.

Accompany an immigrant or immigrant family as they integrate into your local community. You may wish to volunteer as a tutor for an "English as a second language" (ESL) tutoring center. Or if there is a migrant detention center in or near your community, consider visiting those in detention. Visit Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC)'s website for information on a visitation program in your area.

Depending on where you bank, your money may be invested in projects that displace vulnerable communities or damage our environment. Reconsider putting your money in a more financially responsible bank. For guidance, please click here.

Our faith calls us to be peacemakers on Earth. How can you be an advocate for peace in our day? Start by starting Pope Francis' message of peace and after you read it, write down two ways you can incorporate his message into your daily life.

Develop a closer relationship with the natural world. Find your nearest park or wildlife refuge and bring your friends and family on an afternoon trip. Consider incorporating a prayer activity into your trip, or a lesson on identifying native plants and animals. Find your nearest park by clicking here.

Pick a country where there is a Columban community and spend your week researching about the country, learning more about its culture and the people who live there.

Go to mass in a part of your town that you don't visit very often. Get to know some of the people who go there by staying after mass for coffee or fellowship.

Jot down all the purchases you've made this past week and pick one. What's it made of? Who extracted the materials? Who made the component parts, and who assembled them? How did it get to the store? What would happen to it if you threw it out? Answering these questions helps us identity where waste, corruption, and exploitation contribute to the things we buy. To help guide you through these questions, watch the free document, The Story of Stuff.

Gather a group of parishioners or friends and family and read Pope Francis' encyclical, Laudato Si', together. You can use the Columban's "Study and Action Guide" to help enrich your reading.

Join Our Prayerful Community

Sign up to receive the Daily Prayer, Weekly Prayer, Monthly eNewsletter or other news and information from the Columban Fathers.

Email Address*

First Name*

Last Name*

Email Newsletters

Daily Prayer

Weekly Prayer

Monthly eNewsletter

Your browser does not support iFrames

About us

The Columbans are a society of missionaries, including priests and lay people, who minister to people of various cultures as a way of witnessing to the universal love of God.

We go in the name of the Church to announce, by deed and word, the Good News of Jesus Christ.